My email of 11 March 2010 in which I apologised for the delay in responding to your request was not a Refusal notice and the Commission is fully intent on responding to you request as soon as possible. As I mentioned in my previous email the reason for the delay in responding to your request is that some or all of the information you requested can be considered exempt under the sections 30 and 31 of the FOI Act.

Application of sections 30 and 31 exemptions are both subject to the public interest test. As you may be aware, a full explanation of how the pubic interest test is carried out is available on the Information Commissioner’s website http://www.ico.gov.uk. The FOI Act requires public authorities to comply with requests for information within 20 working days following receipt of the request. In cases where a public authority is considering the application of an exemption that is subject to a public interest test (known as a qualified exemption), the FOI Act requires the authority to reach its decision within such time as is reasonable in the circumstances. We will write to you again by the end of next week, either providing the substantive response to your FOI request or serving a S.17 refusal notice re-stating the exemptions being relied upon with an estimate of the time by which the decision will be made.